WASHINGTON – There are increasing indications that large numbers of the Western-trained and financed Afghan National Army, or ANA, and Afghan National Police, or ANP, officers could defect to the Taliban once U.S. and coalition forces leave Afghanistan, regional analysts have said in a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Military forces of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, are slated to leave Afghanistan in 2014, although U.S. troops would begin to phase out combat operations in 2013.

By the end of 2014, the intent is to have some 350,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers trained to provide security as coalition forces diminish their presence in the country.

Mullah Nazeer Ahmad, a top Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan commander, also confirmed to sources that members of the ANA and ANP planned to defect.

The TTP, or Pakistani Taliban, has extensive influence in areas of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan.

The possible defections will help ensure that the Taliban regains control over Afghanistan, which it lost following the U.S. invasion of the country in October 2001.

Such a development would completely undermine the tremendous investment of the West, especially by the U.S., of hundreds of billions of dollars in military equipment, training and construction of facilities in preparing Afghan security forces to assume security responsibility.

Taliban sources in Pakistan have told the Asia Times that they expect major defections from the ANA and ANP.

Taliban sources said that ANA and ANP commanders had expressed a willingness to defect and join the Taliban with their arms intact.

In response, the Taliban will avoid attacking the Afghan security forces and focus instead on U.S. and coalition troops even though they are preparing to depart.

Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

A two-year litigation battle in Pensacola, Fla., heats up next week as a creationism ministry prepares to face county officials in court over a $50 building permit.

The suit Escambia County filed against Dr. Kent Hovind of Creation Science Evangelism is scheduled to be heard Wednesday. The action was taken against Hovind for refusing to obtain a permit before constructing a 30 foot by 48 foot metal building to expand the ministry.

According to a freedom of information request CSE obtained, the county has spent over $200,000 trying to force Hovind to get a $50 building permit. CSE, which works to educate people on the “deceptions of modern evolutionary thinking,” is part of the Faith Baptist Fellowship and doesn’t believe the county has jurisdiction over a free church.

Most churches have incorporated to receive tax-exempt status from the IRS, explains Hovind, founder of CSE. He says such churches are “sticking their head in the noose.”

“They’re no longer a ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ; they’re now an arm of the government,” Hovind told WorldNetDaily.

He says his ministry is not incorporated and therefore doesn’t believe Escambia County has the right to force a building permit on him.

“The county has never demonstrated that they have jurisdiction over a church,” he said.

In 1999, county officials gave Hovind a $50 citation for not having a building permit. He refused to sign it, so a warrant was issued for his arrest. He paid a $5,000 bond to be released and then filed a federal lawsuit against the county.

“All we want is … to be left alone, and we want them to pay the damages they have done to our ministry,” said Hovind.

He explains that his situation is like a Mexican police officer who issues an American citizen a ticket for speeding on a U.S. highway. The Mexican cop would have no jurisdiction to give the American a speeding ticket, so the person shouldn’t sign it, he says. Hovind believes his ministry belongs to Christ, not the government.

“We have very strict standards according to scripture,” he said.

“The county just wants control … and we can’t give it.”

Supporters of CSE have sent over 10,000 e-mails to county commissioners and others who could intervene on behalf of the ministry, but neither lawsuit has yet to be resolved. Hovind says Gov. Jeb Bush is in favor of what CSE is trying to do, but doesn’t want to get involved because it is a local issue.

Due to religious convictions, CSE has been unwavering in its stance against letting the county have jurisdiction over what it believes is Christ’s ministry. The state attorney’s office, says Hovind, told the federal judge on CSE’s case that it doesn’t want the $5,000 in bond money refunded.

“It’s an ego issue,” he said. “They see this as a threat to their little kingdom they’ve developed where everybody has to get their permission to do anything. Any challenge to their authority is taken very seriously.”

Section 4.01.02 of Escambia County’s Code of Ordinances states: “Permit required. No construction or land disturbing activity may be commenced without a valid Escambia County permit. Among others, land disturbing permits, building permits, development orders and/or land use certificates are issued by the county.”

Donald Mayo, director of building inspections in Escambia, had his office refer all questions on the CSE case to the county attorney. Administration personnel at the county attorney’s office told WorldNetDaily that the presiding attorney “has no comment on that case.”

Hovind says the county only assumes it has the authority to require the ministry get a permit and has never addressed the jurisdiction issue.

“We think everybody should obey the law, including them,” he emphasized.

It’s not about the safety of the building, Hovind contends, because private inspectors have inspected it – it’s above the building code and it’s been engineered for hurricane resistance. Several times the county has been invited to come in a “private capacity” to inspect the building and give advice, he says, but they’ve always declined.

The Navy and state of Florida construct buildings all the time without approval from the county, says Hovind, because the county doesn’t have jurisdiction over them. He feels the same about CSE’s buildings. He also doesn’t understand why the Amish are left alone when they build without a permit, yet his ministry has been pressed about a permit for almost two years.

Meanwhile, CSE forges ahead with construction on another building. Members of CSE hope this issue soon will be resolved in their favor, since litigation has been “costly and time consuming.” Hovind says CSE will appeal if it loses to the county.

Parents of 7-year-old Laura Greska have taken legal action against their daughter’s school after Laura’s teacher refused to allow her to read a religious book about Christmas in her classroom.

After months of negotiations with Northwest Elementary School failed, the American Center for Law and Justice, an international public-interest law firm, filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Leominster Public School District in Massachusetts. ACLJ contends Northwest told the Greskas their daughter could not share her Christmas book in class because it contained the story of Jesus Christ’s birth, thus making it religious.

“This is a troubling example of a school district that is clearly exhibiting hostility toward religion and targeting its discrimination against a very young and impressionable elementary-school child,” Vincent McCarthy, the Greskas’ attorney and senior counsel of ACLJ, said in a statement. “The actions of the school district are not only unconstitutional, but send a disturbing message to all elementary school students – that religious beliefs must be treated the same way the school handles profanity or offensive behavior – not permitted at school.”

Last December, Laura brought a book entitled “The First Christmas” to school in response to a class assignment. The second graders were told to bring a book to class that represented their Christmas traditions. According to McCarthy, Laura was the only student to bring in a religious-based book and was told she could not share her book with the class.

“We want the school to comply with Laura’s constitutional rights under the First Amendment and stop their religious discrimination in the classroom,” said McCarthy, adding that it “didn’t make sense” that other students were allowed to express their beliefs when it came to Christmas holiday traditions and Laura wasn’t permitted just because hers were “Christian.”

During the several months of interim between when Laura first brought the book to school and when a lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court, McCarthy says, ACLJ sent a demand letter to the school and also tried to reach an agreement through negotiations with school officials – both to no avail.

“The school has refused to recognize Laura’s rights,” he told WorldNetDaily.

When Robert and Jessie Greska conferred with the school superintendent, says McCarthy, she backed Laura’s teacher and remained firm that Laura had no right to express her Christian faith in class. Ninety-five percent of ACLJ’s cases similar to the Greskas’ case are settled after a demand letter is sent, he says.

“This case is really the exception to the rule,” said McCarthy, who believes the case will still be settled out-of-court sometime in the future.

The attorney representing the school, Regina Tate, was out of town and could not be reached. Northwest school officials and the Greskas also were unavailable for comment by press time.

ACLJ wants the court to address the “discriminatory” treatment it believes Laura has received from her elementary school and asks the court to declare the school district’s action as unconstitutional and invalid.

“We’re moving on this issue now to ensure that our client does not continue to be discriminated against when she returns to class this fall,” stated McCarthy.

Lauralton Hall, an all-girl Catholic school in Milford, Conn., was surprised recently to learn that two of its teachers are involved in a lesbian relationship, and has issued an ultimatum to them – resign or be fired.

School officials discovered the lesbian relationship after the women sent out invitations to some members of Lauralton for a private “commitment ceremony” they had planned. A “commitment ceremony” is a homosexual version of marriage, except that the government and church don’t recognize it as such.

Since the Catholic Church views homosexuality as a sin, the women were told to leave the school for not abiding by the church’s doctrines.

“These ladies should not be teaching in that school,” commented ex-homosexual and former Catholic Stephen Bennett, founder of Stephen Bennett Ministries, an organization dedicated to “sharing the truth about homosexuality with the world.”

Bennett supports the Catholic school’s decision and believes it will succeed in removing the lesbians despite the controversy it has created in both the school and the community. Reportedly there are other lesbians at the school, he says, that the administration doesn’t know about, but who are known to some students.

“The school teaches that homosexuality and lesbianism is wrong, it’s a sin. And yet you’ve got several lesbians there working in the school,” Bennett told WorldNetDaily.

“That’s like an alcoholic teaching a course on not drinking.”

Maureen Murphy of Murphy, Murphy and Nugent is the lesbian teachers’ civil rights attorney for any legal action the two women might decide to take against Lauralton. Murphy did not return WND’s calls and has yet to comment publicly on whatever actions her clients plan to take.

In addition, several students and faculty members of Lauralton are leading a petition to stop the school from dismissing the lesbian teachers.

One parent of a Lauralton student, who knew the sexual orientation of the teachers, told the New Haven Register: “It’s what she’s doing in her own time. She was not espousing homosexuality. I think the students were well aware of her sexual orientation, but the administration was not.”

Bennett says people are becoming “desensitized” to homosexual rhetoric. “People are just getting so bombarded with the gay media that they’re becoming numb to it,” he said.

“One of the final barriers, of course, of the gay movement is to break into all of the religious institutions, so it’s no longer a sin, so they can be accepted everywhere.”

Fairfield Prep is an all-boys Catholic High School and the “brother school” to Laurelton Hall. Bennett attended high school at Fairfield Prep and says there was a lot of homosexual activity going on between the students, teachers and clergy at the school. Homosexuality has run “rampant” through the Catholic Church, he says. Lesbians at a Catholic school are a definite matter of concern, insists Bennett, even though homosexuals say their sexual preference does not affect their teaching.

“I know firsthand when you have homosexual teachers within the school … they very well could influence or entice other girls into that lifestyle.”

A Catholic priest and director of a support group for gay Catholic men and women, Rev. John Harvey, told the Register, “It would be a bad example for the students if the [staff] did not observe Catholic teachings. These two are declaring they don’t go along with the Catholic faith, and the school is justified in firing them.”

WND was unable to contact Karen Yardley, president of Lauralton Hall, but she told reporters earlier that she would not comment on the school’s decision to oust the two lesbian teachers because it was a “personnel” issue.

“It’s a travesty that a school like that would even have someone who’s living that kind of a lifestyle being a teacher,” said Bennett.

He recounts an instance of an ex-lesbian teacher who admitted to him that she used to introduce schoolgirls into the lesbian lifestyle. His organization is now fighting a second grade schoolteacher who was reprimanded by school officials because he “came out” to his elementary class and told them he was a homosexual. The man has now secured an ACLU attorney, says Bennett, and is “bullying” the public school into letting him keep his job.

He teaches a national seminar called “The Heart of the Matter, It’s Elementary,” says Bennett, which demonstrates “how elementary school teachers can incorporate gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transsexual doctrine into their everyday single classroom settings.”

The first legal brief in opposition to the controversial Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because it contains the words “under God” has been filed by a California-based legal action group.

The U.S. Justice Foundation, in its Monday filing, calls for the Ninth Circuit to grant a rehearing of the decision, based on the fact that Newdow v. United States Congress, et al. is a “tremendously important” case with regard to religious freedom and rights.

Michael Newdow claimed the pledge was unconstitutional because it exposed his daughter to religious views that opposed his atheistic worldview.

“The voluntary Pledge of Allegiance does not proselytize or substantially burden anyone such that one could conclude that religion is being forced onto unwilling persons,” the USJF brief states.

In addition to his case involving the Pledge of Allegiance, Newdow has also expressed a desire to strike “in God we trust” from U.S. currency and delete any reference to God in the presidential inauguration.

Gary Kreep, executive director of USJF, says “anti-patriotic” organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way are trying to “ban God” from every public place. They “love” Newdow, says Kreep, because he’s playing right into their agenda.

“This guy is the poster boy of these whackos on the Left,” he noted.

One element USJF emphasizes in its brief is the “educational freedom issue” – an aspect of the case Kreep says has been mostly overlooked. Mandating that schools or students cannot recite the Pledge of Allegiance is an infringement upon their religious and educational freedoms, he says.

“Schools have the right to say, ‘We want to say the Pledge of Allegiance,'” argued Kreep.

“The Constitution does not, on its face, suggest that those who would engage in religious speech must leave their constitutional protection at the schoolhouse steps,” states the brief.

The brief was filed on behalf of several California state legislators and national organizations, including Focus on the Family, Liberty Counsel and the Traditional Values Coalition. Kreep says one of the reasons for submitting the brief was to represent the people of California and other states who oppose the Ninth Circuit’s ruling.

California Gov. Gray Davis and Attorney General Bill Lockyer “didn’t care enough about the pledge” to try and fight the court’s decision or file a brief, says Kreep. Now that they are both up for re-election and the ruling has received so much publicity, he says, they suddenly disagree with the court.

Kreep says USJF will “definitely” present a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court as well to try and make an impact on the judicial proceedings.

“I believe it [the pledge case] will go to the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said. “I believe the U.S. Supreme Court will say that people have a right to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and it should not be barred.”

WASHINGTON – Responding to the widespread creation and free distribution of CDs, videos, DVDs and books over the Internet without regard to copyright laws, as well as other major areas of copyright and patent infringement, a consortium of groups met yesterday to find a solution to the piracy of intellectual property.

The Institute for Policy Innovation, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank founded to develop solutions to public policy problems, co-sponsored the forum, entitled “Invasion of the Idea Snatchers,” along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization dedicated to free enterprise and limited government. Guests from the entertainment, software, hardware and pharmaceutical industries conferred over patent problems.

Susan Mann, federal government affairs manager for Microsoft, reported that the piracy level among Microsoft users was as high as 25 percent. Strong copyright law enforcement is “crucial” for the success of software companies, she said.

“We need strong intellectual property protection,” she strressed.

Robert Armitage, general patent counsel at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, believes protecting patents on new drugs may become much more difficult if certain legislators get their way.

For instance, Senate Bill 812, co-sponsored by Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has as its purpose to provide “affordable medication” to consumers and deter drug companies from engaging in “anti-competitive action.” If SB 812 passes, says Armitage, pharmaceutical companies won’t get trade-secret protection and generic companies will find it much easier to challenge patents on new drugs. He believes it’s only right that the company that procured the patent and invested research money for a new drug should have the exclusive right to sell that drug.

Current laws give drug companies a number of years of exclusivity before the generic companies are allowed to take over the market, he says.

Piracy in the entertainment business only leads to higher prices and less content for consumers, argues Fritz Attaway, executive vice president for the Motion Picture Association of America. His industry is not seeking new copyright laws, he says, but only enforcement of current laws. There has always been leakage of uncontrolled video copies ever since the VCR was invented, says Attaway, but now the movie industry is facing an unprecedented level of piracy through Internet distribution. The entertainment industry cannot continue to make $70 million movies if people won’t pay to see them, he says.

Jeffrey Lawrence, lead attorney to Intel’s Content Protection Programs, believes there must be a multi-level approach to protection of intellectual property, or IP. Content protection education should be taught, he says, instilling values and encouraging people to do the “right thing.” The IP industry sees unauthorized use of its products as theft, says Lawrence, and people need to be educated regarding that reality. New government laws and mandates to protect technology will not avail anything, but enforcing current patents and copyrights should be a priority, he explains.

“We have been the greatest technology country in the history of the world,” Q. Todd Dickinson, partner of Howrey Simon Arnold & White’s Intellectual Property Practice, said at the conference.

The U.S. has become a technology giant through patent protection, he says.

He disagrees with critics who say patents and copyrights are anti-competitive. Patents are “pro-competitive,” says Dickinson, because they help the “little guy” get ahead by protecting his right to his own invention or idea.

This year’s Miss Oregon beauty pageant winner earned her crown after giving a speech on the controversial topic of the link between abortion and breast cancer.

Brita Stream, 22, expressed the need for women to be educated on the abortion/breast cancer issue. During her speech on July 13, she discussed different studies that showed a link between women who have had an abortion and those diagnosed with breast cancer.

Not afraid of a little criticism for her speech topic, Stream told reporters, “I think the word ‘abortion’ often ruffles people’s feathers. This is a health issue not a political one.”

The “ABC link” has been an important issue to Stream outside of the pageant arena, too, as evidenced by a letter she wrote to The Daily Barometer. In it, she refers to a study by the National Cancer Institute, saying, “[T]here is a 50 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer, before age 45, among women who had one or more induced abortions. Furthermore, there is an 80 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer among women who had abortions who also have a family history of breast cancer.”

As reported by WND, the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute has reported that when a woman conceives, her estrogen level increases hundreds of times above normal. The hormone surge leads to the growth of “undifferentiated” cells in the breast as the body prepares to produce milk for the coming baby. Undifferentiated cells are vulnerable to the effects of carcinogens, which can give rise to cancerous tumors later in life.

In the final weeks of a full-term pregnancy, those cells are “terminally differentiated” through a still largely unknown process and are ready to produce milk. Differentiated cells are not vulnerable to carcinogens. However, should a pregnancy be terminated prior to cell differentiation, the woman is left with abnormally high numbers of undifferentiated cells, therefore increasing her risk of developing breast cancer.

Stream’s win came as a surprise to some, because she spoke about what many deem a “conservative” subject and since Stream was a first-timer at the Miss Oregon contest. She received a $13,000 scholarship for claiming the Miss Oregon title and now will go on to the Miss America contest on Sept. 21.

A California-based think tank claims America Online is failing to live up to its anti-hate policy by allowing certain “offensive” words to be used in AOL e-mail accounts, screen names and message boards.

Matthew Rosenthal, executive director of the Institute for the Study and Prevention of Hate Crimes, found that words slurring African Americans or Arabs could not be used when creating an e-mail account with AOL, but words that other ethnic groups might find slanderous were already being used or available for use.

“Why the obvious double standard?” he asks.

If AOL is going to make certain words off-limits, Rosenthal says, then it need to be fair and restrict words that may be construed as discriminatory to all ethnic groups.

A concerned AOL user recently informed the institute – which describes itself as a think tank combating “hate-motivated behavior” – that a person under the screen name of “urakike” was posting “pro-terrorist” notes on an AOL message board. On the Israel Politics board, messages including “Sharon is your pig leader,” “Jews are pigs” and “I’m hoping that when the U.S. finally attacks Israel we use thermo nukes to cleanse the land” were found. Rosenthal was confused as to why AOL would allow such messages to circulate when it claims it doesn’t allow hate speech on its boards.

AOL’s “Rules of User Conduct” states that users must agree they “will not upload, post or otherwise distribute” content that “victimizes, harasses, degrades an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age or disability.”

“They’re unwilling to enforce their own policy,” said Rosenthal.

To see what words AOL would and would not allow in their users’ e-mail addresses, Rosenthal typed in several discriminatory phrases. He says that “uranigger,” “uraraghead” and “uratowelhead” – phrases that African Americans and Arabs might find offensive – were not eligible e-mail addresses. E-mails that included cuss words also were not allowed. When he typed in “uraspic,” “urafaggot” and “uradirtyjew,” he found that the phrases were either already in use or available for use.

“I think they need to standardize their policy,” he said.

Rosenthal reported “urakike’s” messages to AOL on Monday, but he says they still have not canceled the e-mail address or deleted all the “emotionally traumatizing” messages.

Nicholas Graham, spokesman for AOL, told WND, “We have zero tolerance for hate speech on the service, anywhere on the service. So, whether it’s on chat rooms or message boards, if we are made aware of hate speech, we will actively remove it and we will reprimand the member who posted it.”

Asked why certain names are available for AOL e-mail accounts and others are not, Graham replied that there are certain filters in place on AOL, but “there are ways in which if you spell certain words a certain way, or precede them with numbers or asterisks … they are unique enough where we would need to be aware of them.”

Graham says AOL has a Community Action Team that handles hate speech found on the service and that they take action as soon as they are told of an instance where a member is not abiding by AOL’s user rules.

“Once we’re made aware of a screen name that contains a racial slur of any kind, we would block use of that screen name, contact the member and ask them to change it immediately,” he said.

Chris Evans, founder of Internet Freedom, disagrees with Rosenthal.

“Internet users should be free to express their views no matter how objectionable they may be. The right to be offensive is a fundamental part of the right to freedom of speech,” he said.

“Net users are quite capable of dealing with offensive words and opinions. AOL is treating all Net users as if they are pathetic victims unable to stand up to a few harsh words. In doing so, it disempowers users and sets AOL as morally superior to ordinary people.”

Believing that freedom of expression should be allowed over the Net, Rosenthal says he thinks AOL just ought to limit the amount of hate speech.

“When there are people out there with names ‘urakike’ or ‘urachink’ or ‘urafaggot,’ it reminds people how unsafe they are, and it becomes frightening,” he told WND.

“There are certain times when freedom of speech is limited because it can create injury for the public good.”

Using words such as “nigger,” “chink” or “kike” may offend some Internet users, Evans contends.

“But the truth is that it is the Internet audience who are empowered by freedom of speech by being able to make up their own minds about what they read,” he said.

The Georgia Supreme Court has handed down a unanimous decision to uphold a Georgia Court of Appeals’ ruling that a Vermont civil union between same-sex couples is not equivalent to marriage.

According to Liberty Counsel, the law firm that defended the case, it is the first case in the country to define the Vermont civil union as not only unrecognizable as marriage, but also not applicable outside the State of Vermont.

The court this week rejected the appellant’s claim that the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which states that one state will not be compelled to acknowledge another state’s homosexual marriage or union, is unconstitutional. Instead, the court upheld the state’s definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman, as is outlined in Georgia’s Defense of Marriage Act.

In Burns v. Burns, Susan Burns filed papers in court after a disagreement with her former husband on the particulars of a Consent Decree Visitation Agreement. The agreement provided that neither party could have their children stay overnight if either one co-habited with an adult to whom he or she was not married. Darian Burns has custody of his three children and Susan maintains visitation rights.

“Susan Burns began having homosexual affairs during the marriage, so the marriage split up,” explained Mathew Staver, Darian’s attorney and president of Liberty Counsel. Both parties agreed to the Consent Decree shortly after the divorce.

Darian thought the decree necessary, says Staver, because “during the visitation time it happened where the children observed different kinds of lesbian sexual activity.”

Three days after Vermont enacted its civil-union law, Susan and her lesbian partner traveled to Vermont and obtained a civil union. They then returned to Georgia to live. Susan argued that she now is legally married and thus she has the right to visit her children in the company of her homosexual companion.

“Our argument was that a Vermont civil union is not marriage, and therefore it couldn’t be recognized as marriage,” Staver told WND.

“The civil union law itself says a civil union is not civil marriage and that civil marriage is still limited to a man and a woman.”

Judge M. Yvette Miller wrote for the Georgia Court of Appeals that Susan’s position “has a flawed premise; she and her female companion were not married in Vermont but instead entered into a ‘civil union.'”

She went on to state that “even if Vermont had purported to legalize same-sex marriages, such would not be recognized in Georgia, the place where the Consent Decree was ordered and agreed to by both parties. …”

“Marriages between persons of the same sex are prohibited in this state,” Miller wrote, citing the Georgia Defense of Marriage Act.

Through a Vermont civil union, a homosexual couple in Vermont has almost every benefit a heterosexual married couple has except the marriage title. Vermont is the only state so far with a civil-union law that acknowledges an actual legal partnership between homosexuals.

If the Georgia Supreme Court had decided to recognize Susan’s civil union as a legal marriage, Staver says, “then the other 49 states could potentially have fallen like dominos,” and every state might have decided to validate same-sex marriages. Now, with statistics showing that 83.5 percent of homosexual couples who obtained a civil union in Vermont live out-of-state, their union is basically “not worth the paper it’s written on,” he said.

“It was a major setback for the pro-homosexual marriage organizations,” Staver noted.

The judges on the Court of Appeals also rejected a letter from Lambda Legal, an organization that fights for homosexuals’ legal rights, asking the judges to rewrite their opinion on the case.

Staver says that since the Court of Appeals’ decision, Susan has voluntarily chosen not to visit her children as a “symbolic protest” of the state’s refusal to acknowledge her lesbian union.

Adolescent boy slaves in southern Sudan report that their Arab masters routinely rape them, according to Freedom Now World News, which just returned from the embattled African nation.

In an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily, Maria Sliwa, reporter for Freedom Now and sociologist, discussed the widespread abuse of Sudanese slaves by their Muslim captors.

Sliwa interviewed Denka chiefs, Arabs and former slaves while on a recent “fact-finding trip” in the slave regions of southern Sudan.

“The most marked thing that I noted was the admission of rape by a number of the young boys,” she said.

Redeemed slave Deng Ayuel told Sliwa through a Denka translator, “I watched the Arabs rape my two sisters, and I watched many slave boys being raped as well. They would often take a girl or boy and do whatever they wanted with them sexually. I, too, was raped many times by my master and his Arab friends.”

There have been previous reports of female slaves being gang raped in Sudan, but Sliwa discovered that many male captives were also being gang raped. She felt it was important to let others know in the hope that slavery in Sudan might eventually end.

“The more this information gets out, the better,” she said.

“This type of sex is very strange to us,” Deng Deng, another freed slave, testified. “Many times during rape, boys would cry so loudly that the Arabs would stuff rags in their mouths so they could not be heard. I witnessed this often. If you refuse [sex], sometimes they would shoot you.” Deng Deng said he was beaten many times because he was a Christian and wouldn’t convert to Islam.

The boys described their masters taking them to a “special place” right before a rape would occur, says Sliwa. As they were being taken to this place, the boys would try to escape but would be hunted down like animals, she explains.

The rebels of southern Sudan, a mostly Christian and animist region, are fighting for autonomy from the radical National Islamic Front regime, which aims to impose Islamic law on the entire country. Since 1983, about 2 million people have died from the fighting and war-related famine.

Sliwa described how the National Islamic Front takes slaves, saying, “Sometimes government soldiers attack a town. They want to make it into their town. They want to take it away from the civilians. … Then they take the women and children, and they kill a lot of the elderly.”

Those taken are then tied up and forced to walk to “slave centers,” says Sliwa, where they are auctioned off or traded to Arab masters. Both the Arabs that capture the civilians and the Arab masters are “quite brutal” to them, she says.

“Not in every single case, but in most cases, they’re being victimized and raped by both the captors and the masters and the masters’ Arab friends,” Sliwa told WND.

Accompanying Christian Solidarity International, to various redemptions in southern Sudan, Sliwa learned how black Denka slaves are freed. Certain Arabs called “retrievers” work with the Denka and CSI to free some of those who have been taken captive. Sliwa says a while back the Denka told the Arab retrievers that to have use of the Denka land to water their cattle, they would have to help free some of the Denka slaves. These retrievers make their money through raising cattle, thus they agreed to help the Denka, she says.

“The retrievers are actually horrified, because they go into these Muslim towns and they see how these women and children are treated,” said Sliwa.

“It’s very rare for a Muslim to speak out against another Muslim … but these guys were speaking out against them.”

From her interviews with Arab retrievers, Sliwa learned that sometimes the slaves have to be bought from their masters, and other times the slaves are so old and disabled that the masters simply give them away. If an Arab is having sex with a female slave, the wife may find out and take the slave to the retrievers herself, she adds.

“The way the wife usually finds out is the slave has an Arab baby,” explained Sliwa.

The National Islamic Front has been threatening the Arab retrievers because the government doesn’t want them to have anything to do with the Denka, Sliwa says.

“They don’t want the Arabs and Denkas being friends,” she told WND.

“Many of the freed male slaves come to the chiefs and tell us they were repeatedly raped by their Arab captors,” Nhial Chan Nhial, paramount chief of Akon, said to Sliwa. “This affects their minds badly. They are subject to fits of crying, mental problems and are often unable to marry later on in life.”

Sliwa is convinced that the International Criminal Tribunal needs to convict the Sudan government for their crimes against the black Africans of southern Sudan and that the U.S. government should investigate the rape and murder offenses being committed. The media outlets also have a responsibility to get the news of these crimes out to the rest of the world, she says.

While noting that there are human-rights groups and different church organizations working to help the people of Sudan, Sliwa said, “I think we can all do more.”